WALTER AMERIKA MEDIA

Walter's Expertise

Walter is an independent brand and innovation consultant and expert on creativity and the creative industries.
He shares his insights and ideas on ‘socio-economic creativity’ with private companies (new and existing) and public organizations to create added value.
Design thinking, brand building, scenario sketching are his main working tools.
Next to that he is Head of the Market Department of the renowned Design Academy Eindhoven, strategy advisor for the Executive Board of the University of the Arts Utrecht, co-founder of CI NeXt (the leading agenda for academic and applied research for business innovation within the Dutch Creative industries) and member of the advisory boards of Dutch Creative Residencies Network and startup company Layergloss
He is the former chairman and chief creative officer of the FHV/BBDO Marketing Communication Group in Amsterdam and member of the BBDO European Board. He was also Chairman of the Dutch Art Directors Club and member of the Dutch EFFIE jury, chairman of the Dutch Design in Development Foundation, member of the advisory board of EU project Custom Fit and ambassador of the Dutch Design Awards and chairman of the creative board of CCAA (Creative Cities Amsterdam Area).

Creative Industry Netherlands

This week in retrospective: It started with visiting an ACA two day conference (Academic Cooperation Association) held at the University of Vienna. The conference was about what makes a university excellent in terms of higher education, and explored questions on how does higher education play a role in maintaining and building civil society, addressing today’s global challenges, international cooperation, etc. In general the subject was interesting enough, but they tried to kill it upfront with very dull presentations. The sauerkraut diner was there of course as well as the obligatory break out session, which turned into a slight anarchistic moment of class room rebellion. Maybe the beautiful weather had something to do with it. Anyway, it gave Anne Mieke Eggenkamp, the chair of the Design Academy Eindhoven and myself plenty of time to discuss future plans for our own institution.

Wednesday was basicly enjoying a game of golf and discussing details on why and how to integrate the Creative Industries into an regional knowledge and innovation strategy for the North West of Holland. The region is struggling to claim a distinctive socio-economic position and is rapidly falling behind in terms of cultural and inspirational settings, as came out this week in the 2011 Atlas of Dutch Cities. The political climate is not helping either. Hope they realize that if they start making some clear choices the region might be one of the most attractive of the Netherlands.

Thursday was again a conference day. This time on design. Theme of the event was 'What Design Can Do'. Which in itself is a good theme (although What Design Should Do would have been better), however the public was wrong. Almost like at the Higher Education Conference in Vienna, it's professionals talking solely to their own peer group. In this case designers convincing designers how important the role of design is for future developments and the big issues of our time. Don't get me wrong: I highly belief in the power of creativity as Oliviero Toscani stated in a far too long speech, but if there are no policy makers, business people, religious leaders, media tycoons, financial traders etc in the audience to create a joint effort to change or reset, why bother organizing an event with this theme? I truly admire the organizers for their energy and drive, but I keep my doubts on the fact that nobody wants to join creative forces and over and over and over these conferences keep popping up without making an real impact. However, I do need to make my apologies in regard to a Twitter message I send out, merely stating 'Good Theme, Wrong Public'. It created some sour faces, because it did not explain enough of the thoughts as mentioned above. There's nothing wrong with designers! In fact, they are much nicer and more content driven than advertising people (and I know, because I was one). Oops hope I don't piss off the old ad gang. Love them too. Most of them, that is.

Finally, Friday was a day of creative strategies. Lunch with a creative agency, which directors and shareholders consulted me last year on their future path. Great to hear that they are on track again. Then tea with a friend and former colleague on his business (very interesting ideas on artificial intelligence, syncing 'building languages' in order to cut down costs or prototype possibilities, etc). And finally drinks at the new venue of a young and promising company called Studelta, which I advised during their start up period on brand strategy and internal culture. Not an easy sector for them at the moment, temporary workforce and recruitment, but they are on to something. Nice straightforward people, good concept. Wish them all the best.

I've been asked to promote a hackaton. Never heard of it before. But anyway, seems like a good initiative. So here it is:

Europeana provides multi-lingual access to more than 17 million digital items from Europe’s museums, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections. Recently, we have introduced our new service Search API which enables Europeana content to be available beyond the Europeana portal and in a way that is engaging and useful for users. Europeana has planned a series of hackathons to showcase the benefits of the API usage for data providers, partners and end-users (our first was held on 1-2 April 2011in cooperation with Beeld en Geluid)

Hack4Europe! is a series of hack days organised by the Europeana Foundation and its partners Collections Trust, Museu Picasso, Poznan Supercomputing and Networking Center and Swedish National Heritage Board. The hackathon roadshow will be held simultaneously in 4 locations (London, Barcelona, Poznan and Stockholm) in the week 6 - 12 June and will provide an exciting environment to explore the potential of open cultural data for social and economic growth in Europe.

Each hackathon will bring together up to 30 developers from creative industries and cultural institutions from the hosting country and the surrounding area. They will have access to the diverse and rich Europeana collections containing over 17 million records, Europeana Search API (incl. a test key and technical documentation) and Europeana Linked Open Data Pilot datasets which currently comprise about 3 million Europeana records available under a CC0 license.

Participants will be encouraged to try out their ideas for creative reuse of the Europeana content and build applications showcasing the social and business value of open cultural data. Best prototypes will be awarded prizes during the hackathon days and four finalists will be invited to the Digital Agenda Assembly on 16 -17 June in Brussels where EU Commissioner Ms. Neelie Kroes will award the winners during a special ceremony.

Everybody working within or with the Dutch Creative Industries who now joins up with the FREE online community Creatieve Industrie Nederland, gets a 100 euro entry fee discount for the upcoming Creative Company Conference on the 7th of June 2011. From the program:

Morning: Explore the hot trend of Creative Value Networks – How to design a network organization that is connected, creative, smart and effective.

Long Lunch: CCC Experience – A new 2-hours-program of 15 interactive activities to enhance your creativity, network capabilities and enable you to tap the brains of CCC speakers and other business and innovation experts.

Afternoon: Case studies of Creative Entrepreneurship – How innovative pioneers ride the waves of change and chaos to define the new face of entrepreneurship in the terra-connected world.